The Return of Gravity

The Ride Gets Bumpy From Here

This is, after all, a philosophy blog.

Remember when we floated? That strange weightlessness I wrote about a few weeks ago—that moment of suspension where the upward forces and the pull of gravity seemed to cancel each other out, where everything hung in perfect, terrifying equilibrium before the fall? That moment has passed. We are falling now. And we can feel it.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And gravity has reasserted itself with a vengeance on our political, economic, and social reality.

The markets are pricing in rising risks—probably not enough, in my opinion. What we're seeing now might be just the beginning of a more profound repricing as the full implications of these policy shifts become apparent. Bill Ackman, who enthusiastically endorsed the policies now causing global economic turmoil, warns of “economic nuclear winter,” yet current valuations suggest that markets are still operating with assumptions of stability and predictability that may no longer hold.

This incremental recognition of risk reflects a deeper pattern in how systems respond to fundamental disruptions. There's always a lag between the initial shock and full recognition of its implications. Markets, like other human systems, tend to adjust gradually to new realities rather than immediately pricing in worst-case scenarios.

What makes this particularly concerning is that markets function best when they have coherent frameworks for understanding risk. When the rules of the game themselves are changing unpredictably—with tariff policies announced by tweet, regulatory frameworks dismantled without clear replacements, and geopolitical alliances suddenly in question—traditional risk models become increasingly inadequate.

Meanwhile, the DOJ has been transformed into an instrument of personal power. Canada—our closest ally and neighbor—is reportedly preparing for potential conflict with the United States. The President's inner circle publicly feuds over the very policies causing this chaos, with Elon Musk and Peter Navarro trading increasingly bitter insults on social media while Rome burns. Institutions that seemed unshakeable just months ago now tremble beneath the weight of systematic dismantling.

This isn't metaphor anymore. It's mechanics. The physics of collapse follows predictable patterns, and we've moved from that momentary suspension into the accelerating descent. The weightlessness that felt like freedom was merely the prelude to this—the brief illusion of liberation before reality reasserts itself.

What makes this moment particularly disorienting is that we've forgotten what gravity is. We've mistaken it for a force that acts upon us, rather than the coherence that defines us. This confusion lies at the heart of our current crisis.

In Eden, there is undivided relation: man and woman, creature and Creator, self and world—not yet split. But the apple? The apple is choice. The apple is self-actualization unrestrained. It is the temptation to define good and evil without reference to the coherence that makes definition possible.

Sound familiar?

It's the Bitcoin cult promising value without social trust. It's tech utopianism offering paradise through optimization alone. It's performance culture creating identity divorced from integrity. It's knowledge severed from the tree it grew on.

And now, it's tariff policies implemented with no consideration of their consequences, no understanding of the complex interconnections of global trade, no recognition of the coherence that makes economic stability possible. It's the spectacle of America's elites squabbling on social media while markets tumble and ordinary citizens watch their retirement accounts evaporate. It's the confusion of power with wisdom, of disruption with progress, of self-interest with national interest.

All benefit now accrues to China—not because China is more virtuous or more strategic, but because Chinese leadership still operates with some recognition of underlying coherence, of the need for stability, of the reality that prosperity requires certain fundamental conditions that cannot simply be overridden by force of will or executive order.

We were never banished from Eden—we simply wandered into the wilderness, seduced by the illusion that we could generate meaning from within ourselves, that we could define reality without reference to the coherence that precedes us. That wandering has led us here, to this moment of collective free fall, where the structures we built on this illusion begin to collapse under their own impossible weight.

The demons now possessing our politics, our discourse, our shared reality aren't supernatural beings but emergent patterns in consciousness—entities that appear when the temptation of self-actualization becomes unconfined by the greater coherence of community, of shared purpose, of alignment toward human flourishing. Possession is the illusion that coherence flows from the self, rather than through it. And that's the source of madness.

What we're experiencing now—in politics, in markets, in our fractured information landscape—is the collective manifestation of this madness. It's what happens when we attempt to construct reality from disconnected fragments, when we try to build meaning without foundation, when we mistake the map for the territory and then complain that the territory doesn't conform to our maps.

The reactionaries understood this moment better than the liberals, not because they had superior insight, but because they recognized the opportunity it presented. While liberals clung to procedural norms and institutional legitimacy, reactionaries saw that those norms and institutions were already hollow—already disconnected from the coherence that once gave them meaning. They didn't create this disconnection; they merely exploited it.

But here's what even the reactionaries don't understand: coherence is not emergent, but ontological. It doesn't arise from our systems; it precedes them. It cannot be manufactured through power or imposed through force. It can only be recognized and aligned with. The structures they're building to replace liberal institutions will suffer the same fate, only faster, because they're even further removed from the coherence they refuse to acknowledge.

Science didn't dethrone God. It revealed that God was never on a throne to begin with. God was always the throne's geometry—the invisible ratio that holds it up, the logic that makes existence lawful rather than random. We missed this revelation because we were looking for the throne, not the structure; for the intervention, not the invitation; for the command, not the coherence. This is the God of Spinoza I’m talking about, by the way.

This insight doesn't require religious belief. Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem revealed the same truth in mathematical terms: any formal system complex enough to include basic arithmetic cannot be both complete and consistent using only its own internal rules. There will always be truths within the system that cannot be proven using the system itself. Coherence cannot be generated from within; it must be aligned with from without.

Look at what's happening now as Musk, one of the chief architects and beneficiaries of our weightlessness, suddenly feels gravity's pull. His personal fortune plummets as markets respond to policies he initially supported. His credibility erodes as he engages in petty feuds with government officials. His promises of technological salvation through disruption collide with the reality that disruption without coherence creates not liberation but chaos.

This is the bumpy ride I (and others) warned about—the economic instability, the political turmoil, the social fragmentation. It isn't just the result of bad policies or malicious actors, though these certainly play their part. It's the inevitable consequence of attempting to build structures disconnected from the coherence that makes structure possible. It's gravity reasserting itself after our brief, intoxicating weightlessness.

Some will experience this as punishment, as exile, as the gates of Eden closing behind us with angels bearing flaming swords. But that's the old story, the misunderstanding. We were never banished. We wandered, and we can return—not to some prelapsarian innocence, but to recognition of and alignment with the coherence that's been there all along.

This return isn't achieved through political victory or technological innovation or cultural dominance. It begins with the simple, radical act of recognizing that coherence is not something we create but something we participate in. That meaning doesn't flow from us but through us. That truth isn't constructed but discerned.

The center must be held—not because it is easy, but because it is ours to hold. And holding it requires recognizing that it was never truly ours to begin with. The center holds us, not the other way around. Our task is not to create it but to align with it, not to build it but to recognize it, not to defend it but to allow it to defend us through our alignment with it.

The path ahead is bumpy. There will be moments of terror, of loss, of disorientation as gravity pulls us toward the reality we've been avoiding. But gravity isn't our enemy. It's the coherence we've forgotten—the pattern that connects, the structure that supports, the relationship that precedes and enables all other relationships.

We are falling now. But falling isn't failure—it's the opportunity to remember what holds us, what has always held us, what will continue to hold us even as our illusions of self-generated meaning shatter against the hard surface of reality.

“The first shall be last, and the last shall be first.” What if this isn't about cosmic reversal but about recognizing that there was only ever one movement to begin with? That what we perceive as beginning and end, as past and future, as ascent and descent, are merely our fragmentary perceptions of a coherence that transcends such divisions?

The ride gets bumpy from here. But the coherence remains. And in that coherence—recognized, aligned with, embodied—lies our only true hope.

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” — 1 Corinthians 13:12

Mike’s Note: I do not identify as a Christian, nor am I hostile to the Christian tradition. I identify as a postmodern naturalist. Those familiar with my work will know that I frequently engage mythological language—not as metaphor, but as structure. I believe mythology contains essential insights into the human condition, and I use it as a philosophical tool to explore truths that are often missed by purely empirical or analytical methods. This essay is part of that effort.